Sunday, January 8, 2012

The essence of Mormonism

I was thinking yesterday about the essence of Mormonism. A lot of people think it's the Book of Mormon, or living prophets, or exaltation, or polygamy, or faith, or something or other.

I think it's sweeping and mopping. Or more specifically, the essence of Mormonism is getting up at 6 am on a Friday to consecrate a little bit of your time to cleaning a big, pretty building that we believe is sacred and call a temple. Because someone passed around a clipboard on Sunday asking for volunteers.

Yes, when I say "essence" I probably don't really mean "essence" there. But I think that sort of stuff--kind of boring but also kind of endearing in its sincerity--is a really really important part of Mormonism. Everyone just doing mundane, simple things. Running a church, keeping it clean, helping people out; probably not being very good at it but getting it done one way or another.